Mirror Stage | Fabián Monge

Most titles within the Meaningless Data research, as well as the characteristic forms of its compositions, are tools for the same end. Through an arduous process of observation and meditation, they fulfill only the function of suggesting new contradictions between their suggestions, with the main motive of pushing the work further towards uncertainty. Nevertheless, some works are titled with names that mention lived experiences or situations that I consider can contribute to the search for that human subjective that we all share. Just in case the opportunity arises to tell their story. Mirror Stage is one of those works, it is inspired by Jacques Lacan's research on 'the mirror stage' that all babies go through. Thinking about it from the baby's diapers, where everything is totally new and therefore has no historical reference of what it sees. The moment in which it recognizes itself for the first time, giving shape and interpreting that being, that object, entity, container animal, of everything it has thought and is happening within and at every moment. It is the moment that Lacan calls 'mirror stage', a very important stage in people's cognitive growth. During the first 'lockdown' of the pandemic, after several weeks of not seeing people, the thoughts inside me began to exacerbate, I thought more and more things, very different from each other. Without knowing how, the turmoil that was previously outside was now inside my head. Like being at rush hour, on a bus totally full of people, talking, talking to myself but with the windows closed because it's raining outside. When I looked in the mirror, any of those days, because all those days were the same. But at that moment, in front of the mirror, that turmoil of thoughts disappeared. I recognized the phenomenon as a method, as if by looking in the mirror I could recognize some structure in that emotional disorder, as if recognizing that it was only me, a single person, undermined those voices and I delved into a kind of 'Mirror Stage' which in the end gave a feeling, perhaps false, perhaps true, of security. Like a Pareidolic projection of silence and calm that perhaps wasn't there.